Wire guides are typically used to navigate the vasculature of a patient during intracorporeal procedures. Once the wire guide has been introduced, it may then be used to introduce one or more medical catheter devices. Conventional wire guides are typically 0.014 inches in diameter and have a lubricious coating to enhance wire guide introduction movement. These conventional “floppy” wire guides have sufficient flexibility and torque control for navigation through tortuous vessels. In certain procedures or situations, it is desirable to enhance the conventional wire guide with a supplemental wire guide. The supplemental wire guide will straighten out the vessel curves and ease further wire guide movement. Additionally, the supplemental wire guide provides greater support and enhances the tracking of balloons, stents, stent delivery devices, atherectomy devices, and other medical catheter devices as compared to a conventional floppy wire guide. This technique is commonly referred to as the “Buddy Wire” technique, details of which are disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/081,146, filed Mar. 16, 2005.
Several unique supplemental wire guides have been developed which are structured to be slidably coupled to the conventional wire guide (or any previously introduced wire guide) to provide easy and reliable navigation through the vasculature to a position proximate the previously introduced wire guide. These supplemental wire guides are commonly referred to as coupling wire guides or Buddy wires, and exemplary coupling wire guides are disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/507,993 filed Aug. 22, 2006; 11/507,805 filed Aug. 22, 2006; 11/699,174 filed Jan. 29, 2007; and 11/699,171 filed Jan. 29, 2007 the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entireties. Although other variations exist, many coupling wire guides include a separately formed coupling tip that is connected to a distal portion of a wire guide.
It has been found that the process of joining the coupling tip to the distal portion of the wire guide by soldering (i.e. heating a metal with a lower melting point and causing it to be a structural filler) can have certain drawbacks on small products, such as difficulty in consistent repeatability, difficulty in preparing and cleaning the components to be joined, difficulty in controlling solder flow, difficulty in controlling the heat effected zone, and ultimate corrodibility. Accordingly, there exists a need to provide a coupling wire guide for intracorporeal procedures that overcomes these drawbacks.